Social Networks,Substance Use,and Mental Health in College Students

Abstract

Objectives: The relationship between social network risk (alcohol-using close friends), perceived peer closeness, substance use, and psychiatric symptoms was examined to identify risk and protective features of college students’ social context. Participants: Six hundred and seventy undergraduate students enrolled in a large southeastern university. Methods: An online survey was administered to consenting students. Results: Students with risky networks were at a 10-fold increase of hazardous drinking, 6-fold increase for weekly marijuana use, and 3-fold increase for weekly tobacco use. College students’ who feel very close to their peers were protected against psychiatric symptoms yet were at increased risk for marijuana use. Perceived closeness of peers was highly protective against psychiatric symptoms, adding a natural preventive effect for a population at great risk for mental illness. Conclusions: Results support targeting college students through network-oriented preventive interventions to address substance use as well as mental health.     

EU ideology

The idea of Europe was radically transformed after the accomplishment of the idea of European unification. The European Union (EU) and Europe at the beginning of the twenty-first century were defined by a broad common ideology that consists of ideologies such as antinationalism, social democracy, pacificism and environmentalism. These ideologies are presented by pro-EU scholars and politicians as ideologies rooted in European history and parts of European identity and as being mostly absent in the American policies. The emergence of EU ideology is traced in the relaunch of European integration in the mid-1980s and in Delors’ conflict with Thatcher. It is argued that the emergence of EU ideology is the result of two long-term historical developments: the deepening and enlargement of European integration; and the changing relations between the USA and Europe. It is concluded that the emergence of EU ideology resembles the emergence of nationalism and national ideologies.     

Unions and social media: Prospects for gender inclusion

The emergence of web 2.0 technologies led to optimistic predictions that social media (SM) might alter traditional gendered patterns of member participation in trade unions. Greene, Hogan, and Grieco and others suggested that the forms of communication and engagement these technologies offered to unions and their members had the potential to foster gender inclusion and contribute to union diversity, arguably central to effective representation. This article reports on a survey of union members’ experiences with and perceptions of their union's SM services, to identify whether there is a gendered dimension to members’ use. The findings indicate that for most union members regardless of gender, more traditional communication channels such as face‐to‐face contact and email remain the preferred means of communication. However, the findings also show that women are just as likely as men, if not more so, to engage with union SM. Given that historically, women largely participated less in union activities than their male counterparts, this broad parity of use by women supports the conclusion that SM has substantial potential to improve women's participation in unions.     

Vacuum erection device in treatment of organic erectile dysfunction and penile vascular differences between patients with DM type I and DM type II

The aim of this study is to investigate changes in the vascular system and hemodynamics between patients with organic erectile dysfunction (ED) (DM type I and II), as well as to compare the quality of sexual life between those two groups after the treatment with vacuum erection device (VED). Study enrolled 50 males with DM, aged from 35 to 67 years, who have attended the urologic clinic due to inability to attain and maintain an erection of the penis sufficient to permit satisfactory sexual intercourse. Patients were using VED and six months later were assessed for therapy results. The International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF) was used to quantify erectile dysfunction. Alprostadil injection test was also used, with Doppler color flow imaging system, to evaluate the peak systolic velocity (PSV) and diameter of cavernosal artery (DCA). Significantly higher values of PSV were obtained in patients with DM type II. Also, DCA showed significant difference between two groups of patients. There was significant improvement in three items of IIEF after six months of treatment among both groups of examinees. Patients with DM type I had more serious risk for development of arteriogenic ED. VED could be a good alternative therapy for patients who denied peroral therapy.     

Implementation guidelines for mass customization: current characteristics and suggestions for improvement

Interest in mass customization (MC) is increasing in both industry and academia. Academic research on MC implementation guidelines (IGs) has, however, lagged behind other research streams in the MC literature. The present article reviews the existing literature on MC-IGs and inductively derives a classification scheme for prior research findings to identify potential areas for further research. While the issue of what enables MC has been intensively researched, investigation of several questions is still required, such as which enablers should be implemented and in what sequence, depending on the specific context in which MC is pursued. Other areas for future study of MC-IGs include applicability context specifications, as-is analysis tools, hindrance factors and required resources. This article complements previous MC literature reviews by providing an overview of MC-IGs available in the literature, identifying the building blocks of MC-IGs and proposing a definition of MC-IGs that can be used as a basis for future research in MC implementation.     

Visual assessment of matrix-variate normality

In recent years, the analysis of three-way data has become ever more prevalent in the literature. It is becoming increasingly common to analyse such data by means of matrix-variate distributions, the most prevalent of which is the matrix-variate normal distribution. Although many methods exist for assessing multivariate normality, there is a relative paucity of approaches for assessing matrix-variate normality. Herein, a new visual method is proposed for assessing matrix-variate normality by means of a distance–distance plot. In addition, a testing procedure is discussed to be used in tandem with the proposed visual method. The proposed approach is illustrated via simulated data as well as an application on analysing handwritten digits.     

The 2022 Greek pension reform: The rebirth of carve-out privatization in Eastern Europe

After a decade of unprecedented austerity, Greece abruptly changed the course of pension consolidation in 2022 and implemented the controversial carve-out pension funding approach, whereby a portion of existing pay-as-you-go (PAYG) contributions are diverted to fund individual pension savings, thus undermining the financing of existing PAYG pensions. Although inspired by the World Bank’s 1994 pension privatization blueprint, the Greek 2022 reform features a major policy shift by entrusting the management of individual pension savings to a dedicated government body, ostensibly to try to remedy inherent market failures in private pension provision. Like earlier reforms in Eastern Europe, the multi-decade transition costs of carve-out funding have been vastly underestimated in Greece, which will give rise to fiscal distress in the coming years when annual transition costs become sizeable and favourable international financing terms start to change. Unless firm political commitment is established to implement the measures necessary to finance the transition costs, Greece may have to resort to reform reversals similar to those already implemented across Eastern Europe.     

Detecting and removing outlier(s) in electromyographic gait-related patterns

In this paper, we propose a method for outlier detection and removal in electromyographic gait-related patterns (EMG-GRPs). The goal was to detect and remove EMG-GRPs that reduce the quality of gait data while preserving natural biological variations in EMG-GRPs. The proposed procedure consists of general statistical tests and is simple to use. The Friedman test with multiple comparisons was used to find particular EMG-GRPs that are extremely different from others. Next, outlying observations were calculated for each suspected stride waveform by applying the generalized extreme studentized deviate test. To complete the analysis, we applied different outlier criteria. The results suggest that an EMG-GRP is an outlier if it differs from at least 50% of the other stride waveforms and contains at least 20% of the outlying observations. The EMG signal remains a realistic representation of muscle activity and demonstrates step-by-step variability once the outliers, as defined here, are removed.